Content

f. 20v Ages of the World

The content of the Liber Floridus is far from easy to describe. Lambert feared that all knowledge from the previous centuries would be lost in times to come. So he selected the best of his predecessors’ work to preserve it for his contemporaries and future generations. In his Table of Contents, Lambert lists 161 sections, on cosmographical, biblical and historical topics. Sometimes he limits his account to listing the names of popes, kings, nations, provinces, city-founders and inventors. He copies well-known encyclopedists such as Isidore of Seville or the Venerable Bede. The bestiary, a familiar feature of medieval encyclopedia, takes an apocalyptic turn with the presence of Leviathan and the Antichrist. The Apocalyps depictus –the story of the Apocalypse told in ‘comic book format’- must have been an important part of the Liber Floridus, but has, unfortunately, disappeared from the autograph. The eschatological nature of the encyclopaedia - the part that is concerned with the end of the world or of humankind - is still perceptible. It is spread across several places in the work and the history of the world is completed at the end of time, when a new heavenly Jerusalem is founded. Important characters from the past, such as Alexander the Great, play a crucial part in the transition between the different ages of the world , or stages of history.

Bibliography:

Ghent University Library Ms. 92. Lambert van Sint-Omaars, Liber Floridus. Sint-Omaars, ca. 1121.